


Please Empty Your Pockets

by AMountainFullOfDragons



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, I'm going to be honest I dunno if the TSA is ever this nice, inaccurate TSA potrayal probably, mentions of magical Dipper, twins are 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7986919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMountainFullOfDragons/pseuds/AMountainFullOfDragons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plan was to be quiet for the first several days of this family vacation - enjoy it like their parents wanted. Then, slowly convince them to let them go back to Gravity Falls at some point in the summer. But none of that was going to matter if Dipper made them miss the plane. He really should have paid more attention to what he was wearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Empty Your Pockets

**Author's Note:**

> Though I've flown plenty and generally recently, I'm going to be honest and say not only did I probably fudge this TSA interaction but I also overthink the TSA so generally I just go through and get out. A distracted Dipper seemed like the kind of person who would forget literally everything in their pockets honestly. So this happened. Enjoy!

The summer they were to turn fifteen didn’t see them returning to the Mystery Shack and their second home of Gravity Falls. Instead, their parents were bound and determined to have a family vacation that summer. While Dipper and Mabel were both bummed out, they also knew it couldn’t last the whole three months. With any luck, during the three weeks they were crisscrossing the country, the Mystery Twins would be able to convince them that they absolutely needed to return to Oregon that summer. At the very least, they wanted to have time to spend with the friends they had made there, maybe in August before their birthday. After all, Mabel pointed out, they could have an early birthday there, and still return for a family one on time, if their parents were so adamant. Dipper had to admit, she was on to something there.

 

But today was the day they left, and both of the twins had been dropping casual hints in the two weeks between the end of school and the start of Family Vacation Time. And after some reasoning from Dipper, they had both agreed that letting the first few days of their family trip happen was probably in the better interests of getting their way. At least, it would have been, if Dipper hadn’t set off airport security. While the annoyance of his stalled security line sunk in, the teenager stared longingly at his hat, carryon, and shoes which had already made their way through the check, taking up space and causing anger in other also not-so-calm-going travelers. Though the TSA agent did eye his parents, he spoke to Dipper directly.

 

“Can you please empty your pockets so we can try again?” His parents were nodding and so Dipper did as he was asked without much complaint. And that was when he accidentally pulled out that little swiss army knife Grunkle Ford had given him the summer before and Dipper realizes that things were suddenly not going to be so easy. He saw his twin’s eyes widen from the other side of security and she mouthed something that was probably her version of obscenity (as she’d gotten into some pretty flowery fake curses recently) when they locked eyes. From the other pocket he pulls out a nail and he has no idea how it got there. Feeling the stares, Dipper digs through his main two pockets again just to be sure, and finds himself pulling out a sewing needle that he can only imagine is actually Mabel’s fault. And then of course the nail clippers he hadn’t had the chance to give back to Mabel when they had exited the shuttle van to heave their luggage into the airport.

 

Dipper suddenly really wishes he wasn’t wearing cargo shorts.　The younger Pines twin pulls a hand through his hair, wishing for his hat to cover the embarrassment he knows has got to be plain across his face. It’s only a moment later and some talking, but Dipper is fairly certain they have permission from his parents to ask him the following,

 

“Please empty all your pockets.” Dipper supposes its fair really, given the tiny knife and needle, nails, and now nail clippers he has pulled from the other two. With four more, he’s not sure what else he’s going to find. Dipper never thought he was a pack rat, but now he’s thinking he just might be. It’s too bad his favored material isn’t like Mabel’s – all crafting supplies, glitter and glue, harmless as far as anyone else was concerned, especially once she turned that smile on them. His twin sends him a thumbs up after flapping her hands out from the sleeves of her slightly ridiculous but likely useful plane sweater (complete with image of a plane and clouds as one would expect from a Mabel Original).

 

He is thankful when his back pockets only reveal his wallet, which he had realized belatedly he’d forgotten to begin with. The rest of his pockets however are an adventure. He’s not sure how he spaced the pocket black light in the one, but it likely has something to do with the book he’d started reading in the wait line for security. There was a second sewing needle, two more nails he was beginning to realize had come from that ill-fated shop class that school year, and several pieces of wood with half carved sigls and signs in them. Mabel went a little pale at those, likely remembering the year prior when they had both realized his sigil carving had a little more power in it than usual. Dipper counts himself lucky when they find the little bit of metal in the next pocket to be perfectly harmless, rather than to be the object he’d been carving those sigils with during that same cursed shop class.

 

As he digs out the very last of the stuff (lint, three rubber bands, two more pieces of half carved wood sigils, a damned sewing pin, and what might have once passed as a piece of gum), Dipper decides he’s going to have to admit that these shorts were not half as clean as he had thought when he’d dredged them up from his closet the night before in preparation. The TSA agent gave him one more stern look, and Dipper didn’t hesitate to dig through his pockets just one more time.

 

Mabel just about died laughing when he pulled out two more rubber bands from the pocket that once held his wallet, a pine needle of all things, a scrap of paper he’d missed when he found the little black light which is full of sigls he had been wanting to try, and as if to make things even more weird, a small plastic pig he can only imagine is from Mabel’s rather vast collection at this point.

 

Mabel near squealed for her miniature plastic pig and with one final personal pat down, Dipper went through the TSA check with flying colors. His parents spent the next several minutes, while Dipper shoved everything back into his pockets he was allowed to keep on his person, asking him what was going on. Mabel’s incessant giggling, once she had her hands on her pig again and had seen the sigls, didn’t help at all. When the Pines family finally gets to make their way to the terminals, Mabel decides to link an arm with him.

 

“Okay Bro-Bro. How?” She goes back to laughing, though quieter as their parents calm back down. Dipper hip checks her lightly and tugs his hat back on to his head. Answering her takes the entire trip to the terminal and when the plane finally takes off an hour later, Dipper finally lets go that breath he’d been holding since finding the swiss army knife. Hopefully, nothing about the start of the trip would be an omen of the following three weeks.

 

(It isn’t and despite everything, they do find a way to wrangle a spare birthday party in their second home.)


End file.
